While it has been several years since Battlerock Comics published the adventures of Galatea Future in “Future’s Guardian”, the alternate future version of Galatea Powers now living in the world of Champions Online hasn’t stopped being a hero.

In fact, she’s about to show up in another comic.

In the comic series “The Crucible”, published by CoX Comics, the inter-dimensional traveler known as Watcher Twelve and his cat-girl companion have found themselves being dragged into Millennium City. Of course, it doesn’t take long before the two get themselves into trouble and attract the attention of several super-powered beings, the most notable of them being Galatea Future. As someone with literally a thousand years of cosmic history and experience under her belt, she would be one of the few people in the world of Champions to recognize that someone like Watcher Twelve is always connected to some sort of crisis.

Galatea’s creator, David 2, says that he is proud to see another of his comic characters appear in the CoX Comic series.

“In an earlier storyline, we were able to bring Furia Powers in and have her play a key role in the story. The events of that story had an effect on her, as was seen in ‘Furia and the Guardians‘. I’m glad to be working with the people behind CoX Comics again to bring Galatea Future back into the comics.”

David 2 hopes that the superhero’s appearance in this storyline might also spark a renewed interest in “Future’s Guardian”.

As with all things here at Battlerock Comics, comics begin with the written word before they become images.

The story must take shape before it can be told. Characters are developed. Ideas must be explained. A lot of time, energy, and effort go into just getting the pieces set up before a single page can even be created.

As I put thoughts to keyboard and prepare to convince myself of the bad news I’ll be sharing with you, there’s a statement that keeps going through my head…

“My name is not Rob!”

First the bad news: “Furia and the Guardians” #23 will be released in May instead of April. I usually give myself two weeks before release to get a first draft ready for my thankful team of reviewers to parse through it and find the flaws and then debate with me about what a character would be doing and why, and, sadly, with everything going on in the real world, it’s been difficult for me to get material together for this issue to come out on time. So, sadly, I’m having to delay the next issue until the last Friday in May.

And that brings me to the “My name is not Rob” statement.

“Rob” in this case is a somewhat talented artist named Rob Liefeld. You may have heard of him. He was the teenager that created “X-Force” for Marvel Comics way back when. You certainly know his most memorable character: the R-rated “merc with a mouth” otherwise known as Deadpool. That’s not all that he’s created, though. He’s created Youngblood, Brigade, Supreme, Glory, and Bloodstrike. He’s worked for Marvel, DC, and was one of the founders of Image Comics, as well as the owner of his own self-published brands.

But he’s also known for things that are not considered good. For instance, he has a hard time drawing feet. Legs too. He gives guys massive pectorals, almost like breast implants, and give women microscopic waists that would make the old Barbie dolls look fat. He positions bodies in inhuman ways to show face, chest, and butt. He draws outfits with pockets and pouches everywhere. Even on shoulder pads, which are monstrous, he’s got pouches on top of them! Oversized guns, weird swords, he loves showing short people with monstrous sideburns… I won’t even go into “Heavy Flo”, but I’ll warn you to not Google it on a full stomach.

But the one thing as a comic publisher that Rob is notorious for is being late with releases. The most notorious was his delays in the Image-Valiant crossover series “Deathmate”, which some people claim pretty much killed the first incarnation of Valiant Comics. Imagine having a whole storyline done and published and then the middle of the story is told six months later.

So whenever I am obligated to push back a publication, I keep thinking back to Rob and telling myself that I don’t want to be like him. I want to be known as being reliable with my production schedules. I want people to be able to come to the site and read new comics every month. I want to be the constant in the City of Comic Creators and the various Facebook groups that “like” my publications. (I’m hoping they are actually reading the comics and not just “liking” them because they like the idea that these comics can still exist.)

Unfortunately, there are times like now when I can’t be that guy every month. So I’m hoping that you, my readers, can understand when I have to push a publication back a month. I don’t want to make it a habit of doing it, and I certainly don’t want you to think I’ve lost interest in this.

Because, unlike Rob, this really is a labor of love for me… and it’s not like I can bounce my talent between major publishers.

When you have a cosmic crisis that threatens Earth, and you actually do somehow pull it off, sometimes you forget the little things that go on because of it.

As you’ll see in “Furia and the Guardians” #19, Earth is spared the devastation of a coronal mass ejection, but not without some consequences. The power is out in certain places, and some of those outages are not because of the CME.

Thankfully the Guardians of the Dawn have it under control…

Of course that’s not all that happens in the issue. There is also that rescue effort to save the Kheldian hybrids that saved the Earth, but thankfully the Guardians have their most powerful hero in charge of that, with a little help from a certain D-List superhero group from JK Comics.

Why them? Well if you’re readers of JK Comics, you’d know why. But even if you’re not, it will become pretty evident in this issue.

“Furia and the Guardians” #19 will be released on November 25th, otherwise known in America as “Black Friday”.

The next issue of “Furia and the Guardians” has been pushed back to the last Friday in November. This is due to several factors, including the addition of a new small and furry family member that has taken a lot of time at the Battlerock Comics office.

The move also allows writer/creator David 2 to work closely with the folks at JK Comics, whose characters from the “Justice-Knights” series will be playing a key role in the current “Icarus” storyline.

President Obama and Justice-Knights to Appear in Multi-Part Space Crisis

GEORGIA – (08/19/2016) – When people think disasters, they usually think hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes.

But what happens when the threat is from outside the planet, and is so large it could incinerate the whole world in one swoop?

In a city full of superheroes, can any of them be able to stop this threat?

This is the question that faces the heroes of the fictional Paragon City in the upcoming pages of “Furia and the Guardians” as they start a multi-part storyline called “Icarus”.

Writer and publisher David 2 says that the crisis that Earth faces will seemingly come from nowhere and put everything on hold.

“The heroes of the city will be busy handling their own problems. Things will seem boring or mundane. They will have no idea that something this big will be coming.”

The threat, according to David 2, is something that comes straight from the cable channels.

“One of the things I enjoy watching on cable channels like the Science Channel and the Discovery Channel are shows that feature what’s out there beyond our own atmosphere. The message that we continually get is how lucky we are to be on the right kind of planet in the right kind of orbit with the right kind of conditions for us to exist and how perilous that perfect balance is and how easy it could be for it to just end.”

“There are many things that are out there even in our own solar system that could spell the end for us all. The most obvious threat is an asteroid like the kind that helped exterminate the dinosaurs. But that scenario’s been done over and over. We could get hit by a comet. The moon could break away from us or even come crashing down. We could cross paths with a rogue planet.”

“But then I realized that there is one threat that we face every single day, and it’s from the one source that we can’t help but see every single day. Every day we play a roulette game with it, wondering if today is the day we roll snake-eyes. And sometimes we do that. And sometimes we don’t. And in today’s heavy technological age, we really don’t want the cosmic dice to roll snake-eyes on us, because even a close-enough near-hit could mess things up for us.”

The threat will first appear in “Furia and the Guardians” #17, in an issue appropriately titled “Prelude to Calamity”.

“After the threat appears, everything up to this point will pretty much be put on hold,” said David 2. “When you’re facing a threat this large, when you seriously have to wonder if you will be able to exist afterward, you start to put things into perspective, and that’s what you’re going to be seeing here.”

President Barack Obama will appear in “Furia and the Guardians” #18. This is not the first time a sitting president appeared in the pages of a comic series set in the “City of Heroes”. He appeared in a quick cameo in “City of Comic Creators Compendium” #5 as part of a special “Guardians of the Dawn Spotlight” story, and again in flashback in “Guardians of the Dawn Spotlight” #14. He has also made an appearance in the “PNN News Break” teaser series.

David 2 says including the President in the story is important.

“We’re talking about what will be a global threat, and with a threat that size, you can’t help but involve the President of the United States, whomever that person may be. He’s the leader of the free world, whether you like him or not, and at the very least, you need him to try to explain the threat to the public. This has been the traditional role of the President. Plus, this will pretty much be the last chance I’ll be able to include Obama as the President, since he steps down in a few months.”

Obama won’t be the only one playing a part in the crisis, though. The Justice-Knights, the central superhero team of the JK Comics publication, will also be appearing in the storyline. David 2 says that this is the continuation of the teamwork between himself and fellow creator-and-publisher Joseph Cohen.

“Joseph and I have worked on a few collaborative efforts before. He’s helped with my comics, and I’ve helped with some of his, and we’ve also worked together on ‘The City’s Finest’ #2. And with a threat this size, we can’t just have one superhero group simply doing everything. Paragon City is called ‘The City of Heroes’ for that reason.”

Although JK Comics describes the Justice-Knights as “an unfamiliar d-list super-group”, they do apparently have one advantage that make them uniquely qualified to play a role in the coming crisis.

“Not too many groups can claim to have a repurposed mothership as their base,” David 2 said.

While the details of the threat are being kept quiet for now, David 2 says that the focus of the hero series will change afterward.

“For the past few months, the series has been temporarily renamed ‘Galatea and the Guardians’ while Furia Powers, the central character, has been sidelined. By the end of this storyline, though, Furia will be taking center stage again. And, I think, the readers will understand why by then.”

“Furia and the Guardians” is a fan-made comic series based in the now-defunct City of Heroes MMORPG. All material is acquired through the client-side applications using Titan Icon and through demo-recording.

The “Icarus” series begins with “Furia and the Guardians” #17, which will be online on August 26th.